OVERVIEW
If you want to know what's going on in the neighborhoods of the St. Louis area, the most comprehensive coverage comes from the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis.
In print, six separate editions are distributed to almost 70,000 subscribers and selected households across the St. Louis metropolitan area each Wednesday.
The hallmark of Journal coverage is local news and features. The six editions of the Suburban Journals not only are committed to providing the best possible community news coverage, but also to getting in as many names and faces of our community members as possible. Stories about community government, school boards, neighborhood associations, community organizations and chambers of commerce receive high visibility in the Journals.
You'll also find comprehensive coverage of news from local police and fire departments. The news pages are tailored to local people: community leaders, school teachers, gardeners, small business owners.
A main focus is to recognize the achievements of local youth. High school sports coverage long has been a staple in the Journals.
The Journals work closely with stlhighschoolsports.com to provide the best coverage.
The newspapers regularly publish obituaries, births, anniversaries, weddings, engagements, and an extensive number of community calendars, providing in many cases the only outlet for community groups to publicize their events.
In addition to the weekly newspapers, other members of the Journal family are the Ladue News, St. Louis' Best Bridal, Feast magazine and stlmomsanddads.
The Journals are a division of Lee Enterprises, which also owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Journals and Post-Dispatch collaborate on advertising sales and in a number of other areas, including online, but newsroom operations are separate.
News, sales and other Journal operations are housed in Town and Country, Mo., and Collinsville, Ill. Each office is responsible for a group of publications and each newsroom is largely autonomous. (Click here for contact information.)
HISTORY
The Journals trace their official history to July 1922, when Bernard H. Nordmann launched the 39th Street Neighborhood News to serve local businessmen, organizations and residents. He followed that successful venture with free community newspapers covering a number of other areas, including Grand/Gravois, South Broadway and Manchester/Choteau.
Elsewhere in south St. Louis, Frank X. Bick purchased the Cherokee News in 1933 and renamed it the South Side Journal. The paper began a fierce competition with the Neighborhood News that would continue until the two operations merged in 1970 to form St. Louis Suburban Newspapers. Bick's son, Frank C. Bick, had launched the South County Journal in 1961 and eventually built Suburban Newspapers to include 10 papers in the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County and reaching into Jefferson and Franklin counties.
In the northern area of the city and county, the Journal organization traces its roots to 1935, when Arthur M. Donnelly purchased the Wellston Local and renamed it the Wellston Journal to serve the area on the central western border of the city of St. Louis. The Donnelly family later expanded into other parts of North County and in 1957 launched the St. Charles Journal. The family also started papers in the Metro East area and the company grew to encompass 25 newspapers.
In 1984, Ingersoll Publications, a group of dailies and weeklies primarily in the eastern United States, bought the two chains of suburban papers and created the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. Ralph Ingersoll, the first managing editor of The New Yorker magazine, purchased other independents until the group ringed St. Louis. After a failed effort to start a new St. Louis daily newspaper in 1989, and due to other financial troubles, Ingersoll forfeited his weeklies to an investment company, Warburg Pincus, which in 1990 formed the Journal Register Co. to oversee the Journals and other publications.
Journal Register grew to include other dailies and weeklies, going public in 1997 on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2000, Journal Register sold the Suburban Journals to Pulitzer Inc., owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a number of other daily and weekly newspapers. In turn, Pulitzer was purchased by Lee Enterprises in June 2005.
ABOUT OUR OWNERS
Lee Enterprises, founded in 1890 and based in Davenport, Iowa, is a premier publisher of newspapers in midsize markets, with 51 dailies and a joint interest in five others, a rapidly growing online business and more than 300 weekly newspapers and specialty publications in 23 states.
With the acquisition of Pulitzer, Lee became the fourth-largest newspaper company in the country in terms of dailies owned, and grew from 12th to seventh-largest in terms of total daily circulation.
Lee's stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LEE. For more information, see lee.net.
